Utilitarian Review 3/8/13

Tom Spurgeon reports that Kim Thompson has been diagnosed with cancer. I had my first online troll battle (via email) with Kim way back when. I hope he beats this thing and is around for many more. You can find the address to send well wishes at the link.

I finished Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall (which was a bit disappointing.) Read Christine Yano’s Pink Globalization about Hello Kitty’s global reach for a review. Started Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, also hopefully for a review.

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I’ve been reading the most recent n+1 issue (they offer epub subscriptions, which I love). Not a huge fan of the fiction offerings in it, but the essays/non-fiction are quite good. Been trying more magazines lately.

Rerereread Raymond Queneau’s Odile which is partially autobiographically about his time in the early 20th century intersecting with the then nascent Surrealist group in Paris. At times scathing portrait of “Anglares” (aka Breton). I love Queneau, he’s a writer I always return to when I’m not sure what else to pull off the shelf.

I finished Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived In The Castle a few weeks ago and then saw Park Chan Wook’s Stoker last week. I enjoyed both very much and I wondered if the similarities were coincedence.
In both there is two female characters living in a big rich home, the younger woman in each is a real outsider taunted by people around her. Both also have a relative called Charles who suddenly comes to stay that very little is known about. Both have something about poisoning food.

I’m still reading One Piece; I’m up to volume 14. I also finished Lucy Knisley’s Relish, which means I need to write a review. And I started reading the Fables graphic novel Werewolves of the Heartland, which I’m finding kind of awful. This might be the series’ jump-the-shark moment (although maybe that already happened with The Great Fables Crossover…); it’s got ugly art, a lame story that spends a lot of time recapping at least one earlier story from the series, and not much point that I can see. Maybe I’ll change my mind by the time I finish it, but not likely. It’s more likely that I’ll quit reading the series altogether.

I watched The Master, which was quite good, and also REC 3, the third installment of the Spanish zombie film series. It was fun, with an amusing shift from found-footage to a traditional style, and some great, goofy moments, like a bride firing up a chainsaw and going nuts on some zombies for ruining her special day, all while swelling, romantic music blares in the background. I enjoyed it.

TV: I started watching Misfits, a British series about some juvenile delinquent kids who get superpowers in some sort of as-yet-unexplained lightning storm and deal with other strange stuff that started happening at the same time. I’ve only watched a couple episodes, but it’s all right so far, and I’ll see if it grows into something special.